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Min/Maxing gear before 80 part 2

Your Casual/Hardcore and want to know what to get when with your limited time so you can be hardcore?

Bored at work and feel like researching the best.

Want to get the head start on the gear, not throw away the level 73 quest rewards that won’t get replaced until you clear Ulduar?

Then this post, part 2 of my series on Min/Maxing your pre-80 character may fill in the gaps.

In part 1 I discussed using Wowhead’s profile and find an upgrade tools to get you from 1-70, well they will get you further and will sometimes reveal items that other tools, such as Rawr, won’t reveal. So don’t stop using it even though there is a new tool in your arsenal.

Rawr

Rawr is tuned for level 80, but can still be useful before then. The closer to 80, the more useful it becomes.

Rawr will do all sorts of incredible calculations for most of the class/spec varieties. New versions are coming out frequently to handle the tweaks as Blizzard delivers them to us. So keep it up to date.

Character Profiler

You don’t need to join the character profiler website to get excellent mileage out of this addon. I do use the website because I like to know what’s in my bank etc when I am away from the game.

For the purposes of optimizing your character and predicting upgrades, you just need to install the addon and make sure you save the data before logging off your character of choice. Make sure you read the instructions, open you bank, mail & professions etc before saving.

Where to begin…

I am going to assume. You have downloaded and installed (extracted) Rawr and have downloaded and installed Character Profiler. Logged in and taken a snapshot of your gear by saving your character (save button on character sheet)

Preparing Rawr for action.

Start Rawr

Choose Create New Character – it doesn’t matter yet

Deselect all the things you don’t have access to yet in the filter dropdown on the right hand panel (above all the possible gear options).

You may cut this right back to just the 3 or 4 instances you can currently enter. May include faction gear or craftables – the choice is yours!

Exit Rawr so it remembers (and activates) your filter settings

Start Rawr, once again with a blank character.

Making the best of a bad situation

The next step is to make the most of what you already have. The great thing about using character profiler is that it has a list of ALL of your gear. Not just what you are wearing (like armory), but the gear in your bank, bags and mail as well.

Choose File | Load from character profiler

Select your realm and character and import.

A minute later Rawr will be displaying for you your character. It knows your spec and your gear, so the time has come to make it do some thinking.

Spreadsheeting the before and after.

At this point I grab a snapshot of the gear I am wearing and put it in my spreadsheet.

Tools | Copy character stats to clipboard.

Paste it into your spreadsheet and get rid of everything except for the slot name and item. You can keep the rest… It’s all useful information, it’s just that I am talking simple gear selection here.

You may want to copy and paste this gear a 2nd or 3rd time depending on the number of scenarios that are important to you. For instance, I want to know about Sustained and Burst gear. Sometimes mana is more important than haste and power, so I am going to build 2 sets… Of course if you are dual spec, this might blow out a little more.

Wriggle your fingers and work the magic!

Remember I am not here for the in depth explanation of Rawr. Go to their website or EJ’s for that. So as simply as possible you want to optimize your gear.

Very soon Rawr will come back telling you which items you are wearing that need to be replaced with other gear you already possess.

If you let it, it will also recommend gem and enchant replacements. This is good, but you may be using the item for more than one role, so you choose the role that is most important and go with that recommendation.

Choose to update to recommended gear.

Save It!

Save your new gear selection. It’s one of those points in time, but also makes it easier to return to this point if you are messing about later.

Once again, copy the character stats into your spreadsheet, reducing it down to the slot and gear.

Now you can clearly see what you are wearing, and what you want to wear next time you log on.

Being a little dense at times I have used an Excel conditional formatting function to change the cell colors of the “new” gear depending on whether it is already equipped, or needs to be on next login.

You couldn’t call me pure…

As I mentioned earlier you have the flexibility of designing gear sets based on the encounter.

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8 Responses

I’m bookmarking this for later reference. I have RAWR but I’ve not taken the time to really make good use of it. Instead I stick to what I know, which is spreadsheets, tooltips, and many quality hours at the target dummy. This certainly looks more productive to me :)

I have rawr, and conceptually it is really cool, but I doubt some of it’s numbers. I loaded my elemental set, and it has me doing roughly double the dps that I actually do. I know my usage is “sub-optimal” but I can’t hit those numbers on patchwerk, raid buffed and just blasting away.

[…] Gnomeaggedon posted 2 guides this week on how to min/max gear before hitting 80. This is something I don’t usually put much thought into when leveling an alt, although it is an interesting idea. You can find part 1 here, and part 2 here. […]